In this abandoned asylum, the hellish memories are hard to escape — since they’re all around you.
Photographer Roman Robroek went inside an abandoned 19th-century asylum and his eerie photos show the remnants of the horrors patients were subjected to. The asylum — in an undisclosed location in Italy — conducted electroshock therapy, according to Jam Press, but the forgotten relics remain.
The asylum had housed more than 1,500 patients but was closed down in the late 1980s when the country underwent psychiatric reform, and the building has remained vacant ever since.
Leftovers of the former asylum show electroshock chairs complete with restraints, an operating room where doctors likely performed experimental surgeries on the brain and nervous system and untouched medical instruments and equipment left over from procedures done in decades past.
The 32-year-old photographer, who hails from the Netherlands, accessed the abandoned hospital by crawling through several underground tunnels, he revealed in his blog.
“The building has been sealed pretty well and entering was only possible by going through a very dark tunnel system in the cellar of the building,” Robroek wrote of his experience.
“We had to use our flashlights to see and we were not able to stand straight up,” he added. “We also had to crawl over various objects to finally reach our destination; a staircase leading upwards. You could easily get lost down there and it was quite scary here and there.”
Robroek did not reveal the exact location of the asylum, and typically never discloses details, so as not to encourage vandalism.
Other unsettling sights include a room with a steel bed and a chapel at the center of the building with a single cross on the wall.
“It’s my favorite abandoned place that I’ve been to yet,” Robroek admitted. “The photos show how nature is clearly taking over a huge building, and even though the building has been abandoned for tens of years, it’s obviously still in a good shape.”
“The objects that have been left behind in combination with the history make this a very interesting visit to me. When I first saw this place I was just flabbergasted.”